


Crashing and Burning

by hurtcomforts (plnkblue)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Blood, Crash Landing, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Stitches, i never feel like i add enough tags to these things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 16:45:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14898245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plnkblue/pseuds/hurtcomforts
Summary: Considering the circumstances, Poe thinks this mission could have gone a lot worse.It’s not his first crash, not by a long shot. That doesn’t make it any more pleasant to handle.(Or: On a mission to a First Order controlled planet, Poe’s X-wing is shot down. Things seem to only go downhill from there.)





	Crashing and Burning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bubbly88Tay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bubbly88Tay/gifts).



> hi hello i just want to apologize in advance for any canon inconsistencies. i'm not an avid star wars fic writer, mainly because it's a universe that i'm terrified of portraying incorrectly, but i hope this is at least somewhat well done!
> 
> technically, there's a second part to this fic planned, but i didn't have time to add it in before the exchange deadline. but if anyone is curious as to how the rest of the mission goes for poe, i can tack it on eventually! anyways that enough of my ramblings, enjoy!!

Considering the circumstances, Poe thinks this mission could have gone a lot worse.

Things didn’t even start going south until after he had run through the blockade over Akiva, dodging oncoming TIE fighters on his way to the surface. He fired repeatedly at a ship in his line of fire, whooping victoriously when it exploded in a bright orange arc. “How’s it looking back there, BB-8?” Poe shouts over his shoulder, waiting for the little droid’s response. A few beeps and whistles answer his inquiry, and he smirks. “Of course they are. How about we give ‘em a little show, then?” BB-8 whirs excitedly in reply, and Poe grips the controls, angling his X-wing into a nosedive.

Poe watches the stars blur outside his cockpit until the cluster of pursuing TIEs fills his vision again. He fires again, and the first one in line goes up in flames. He grins as he ducks and weaves his way around the fighters, taking each one out with precision and letting out an excited whoop when the last one followed suit. A comment from BB-8 reaches his ears and he chuckles. “That’s the plan, buddy, but there’s nothing wrong with a little fireworks now, is there?” He speeds past the TIE debris as he continues towards the planet’s surface, faintly acknowledging the second round of fighters being released by the blockade ships.

In all honesty, Poe knew he was wasting time by antagonizing the fighters. His mission was to bring the intel he had gathered to a group of allies on Akiva. That was it, letter for letter. No destruction required. Still, his reputation as a “trigger happy flyboy” preceded him within the Resistance, and he’d be lying if he said that it wasn’t fun for him to see the First Order all riled up.

Even with the TIEs on his tail, it doesn’t take Poe long to break the atmosphere. As he continues his decent, he ducks and dodges the oncoming fire, the green of the planet coming into focus as large forests the closer he gets to the ground. He comes out of a aerieal spin with a grin wide enough to spit his face before he’s struck with the sudden realization that the TIE fighters have stopped firing. In fact, they were no longer pursuing him in chase towards the surface. Poe frowns, the first inklings of concern creeping up on him. _Why are they--_

He doesn’t get the opportunity to even finish his thought, confusion quickly being replaced with dread as something strikes the side of his X-wing, and Poe finds himself rapidly losing altitude. A quick succession of beeps from BB-8 tell him that the left wings are decimated, the reason for which being a large turbolaser stationed under the cover of the forest’s overgrowth. He grunts, focusing on keeping the craft steady as the ground approaches faster than he would have liked. It’s not his first crash, not by a long shot, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant to handle.

Poe braces himself as best he can before his ship hits the ground, skidding across the dirt and careening towards the edge of a forest. He grips the controls tight enough to feel his knuckles pop, gritting his teeth hard enough to feel the sensation creep up the sides of his skull. The ship collides head on with the trees, the impact jerking Poe forward and jostling him hard enough for his head to collide with the top of the cockpit. He can just barely hear BB-8’s binary shrieks over the snapping of wood and beeping of the alarms as the barrage of trees in their path drag the X-wing to an eventual stop on the forest floor.

He wastes no time raising the top of the cockpit and hoisting himself out of the pilot’s seat. He perches on the corner of the ship as he pulls the helmet off his head, running a hand through his hair and wincing slightly when his fingers brush against a bleeding cut near his forehead. Smoke billows behind him and he feels the heat crawling up his spine, sweat clinging to his skin as he turns to assess the damage. Sparks fly around the fuselage, a fire spreading itself along the tarnished metal of the ship’s wings. Panic begins to settle in in as he sees the flames inch closer in the corner of his eye, and he realizes exactly what’s about to happen.

_The ship is going to blow._

“BB-8!” he shouts, hearing the droid hit the ground beneath the ship with a few frantic beeps and a loud clunk. He pushes himself off the hull of the ship and feels the impact of his feet on the ground reverberate through his body. “Hurry up, buddy, we gotta get out of here.”

The words have only just left his mouth when the wave of heat washes over him, the strong force of an explosion propelling him forward into the side of a tree. Poe hits the bark and drops to the ground like a ragdoll, pain exploding in his shoulder and abdomen and resonating across his entire torso. He gasps sharply, white spots exploding across his vision as he rolls onto his back. He presses his side to the tree and pushes his weight off the ground with shaking legs, one palm pressed flat against the bark. He feels the wood dig itself into his hand, and he inhales heavily.

A sharp pain pierces through his abdomen, and he makes the mistake of looking down.

A large piece of metal had ripped itself from the ship and had now embedded itself nearly six inches away from his hip. Where his shirt isn’t torn from the shrapnel, he sees angry red stains that only seem to get darker the longer he stares. Poe can’t even begin to guess whether or not the metal went all the way through. Each breath drawn in is agony as the foreign object twists itself deeper beneath the surface of his skin.

His knees hit the dirt before he even registers himself falling. He doesn’t even have time to catch himself with his hands before his face hits the ground, the metal in his body pushing itself even deeper. Poe’s vision goes white again and he can’t help but let out a strangled scream, fingers digging into the dirt in the hope of gaining enough traction to push himself up. “Come on, Dameron.” His voice slips out in a determined whisper and he tries to ignore the tremble of his lips, the way they shake as they try to keep the blood inside his mouth. _Keep going, damn it._ His arms shudder under his weight, however, and his shaking fingers give out beneath him not long after. This time, all he can manage is a wet cough.

His blood splatters on the dirt.

BB-8 beeps anxiously beside him, worry and concern buried within his binary tone. Poe grits his teeth once more and crawls towards the droid, his elbows digging into the dirt to propel him forward. “BB-8,” he rasps out, faintly aware of the warm wetness lining his lips. “G…” he draws in a breath, “Get...help.” BB-8 whistles nervously, obviously not wanting to leave Poe when he was clearly in distress. But the man’s eyes bore into the droid, and he beeped out a confirmation, twisting his head around and rolling into the brush.

Once BB-8 leaves his sight, Poe continues dragging himself across the dirt. Each push and pull of his left arm send daggers of pain into his shoulder, and his stomach screams in protest with every movement of his body along the forest floor. But he knows, he _knows_  that the First Order is on his tail. They shot him down, they could easily trail the wreckage with all that smoke and he had to hide, had to get away, had to finish his mission had to _stay alive--_

Black spots dance in the corners of his vision, and Poe coughs hard enough to feel something inside him constrict around the metal lodged within him. Blood trails down his chin and onto his hands, curled into fists as they push him forward towards the brush, towards a place to hide just for now, just for the time being, _just until BB-8 comes back…_

The world loses its color, and Poe slips away with it.

For a while, Poe swims in darkness.

* * *

His mind attempts to break the surface a few times. The first time, he’s met with only pain, and it doesn’t take long for the agony to drag him back under. The next time, he’s only faintly aware of the sensation of being pulled. It only lasts a second, and the darkness takes over him once more. It’s not until the third or fourth time his consciousness peeks through that it decides to stay put.

When it does, his eyes open slowly. When he’s not immediately blinded by bright light, he takes that as a good sign. His gaze focuses slowly upon dingy walls, light speckled gently along them in uneven patterns through the holes in the curtains pulled over the windows. A small table with a short chair is pushed up into the corner of the little room, bottles and tools strewn all about.

“Oh, you’re awake,” a voice sounds from behind him. Poe starts, hissing through clenched teeth when the motion sends pain shooting across his midsection. A young girl comes into view beside him, holding a cloth that she pressed to his forehead. The fabric is warm and damp, and Poe only feels a slight sting as she dabs the cloth around his cut. He blinks up at her, confusion present in his gaze.

“Where-- How did you…” Poe begins, trailing off before a series of quiet coughs wrack his frame and send waves of pain coursing through his body. He groans, curling his fingers into fists as he feels the currents of discomfort ebb and flow.

The girl waits until he’s calm to answer him. “Pulled you back,” she says simply, gesturing over her shoulder to a large plank with a rope tied through it. Poe tries not to look at the dull blood stains on the surface. “Your droid found me.”

“BB-8?” Poe blinked, shifting his weight onto his elbows in an attempt to sit up. Pain shoots up from his abdomen in a split second, and his arms give way beneath him. The girl’s hand is behind his head in a second to prevent it from colliding with the stiff bed, her other hand pressed down on his uninjured shoulder.

“Yes, he found me,” she repeats. “Don’t get too excited. You’ll upset the stitches.”

“Stitches?” It was in that moment that Poe noticed he no longer had a large beam of metal rebar protruding from his stomach. He brought his fingers (still caked with blood and dirt) to the wound and felt his breath hitch when they touched the sensitive surface. The metal was gone, replaced by a patch of gauze and the indents of the stitches beneath it. He exhaled shakily, looking back up in confusion at the girl. She couldn’t have been any older than fourteen, and yet here she was, tending to his wounds like the medics of the Resistance. When she was positive he wouldn’t undo the work she’d done, she released his shoulder, stepping back around to the table beside him.

“You’re not from around here,” she says, casting a quick glance in his direction before scanning the tools in front of her.

Poe nods as best he could while lying on his back. “My name is Poe,” he says simply, unsure of what else he could say. “I’m with the Resistance.”

The girl picks up a small handful of tools and bottles and drags the chair over to Poe’s side. “The Resistance, huh?” Her voice is as quiet as it had been since Poe first heard her talk, but now it was tinged with something else. Something sad. “Akiva has seen a lot of resistance over the years, I’ve heard.”

“Who are you?” Poe asks bluntly, eyebrows knitting as he watched her sterilize the tools with one of the bottles.

She sighs softly, concentrating a bit too hard on the sterilization of the tools. “My name is Kaelen,” she says after a short while, never glancing up to meet Poe’s eyes. “This may hurt. I’m sorry.”

Poe is about to ask what she means, but before he can, she reaches across to grip something in his left bicep at the same time she brings a clamped tool to his shoulder and-- _oh._

He doesn’t know how he had managed to spend the last five minutes completely unaware of the shrapnel still stuck in his shoulder, but he was grateful for it. Until now. Kaelen keeps his arm steady with her grip on his bicep as she yanks the half-wedged piece of metal out of his skin with a sickening squelching noise. It’s so unexpected that Poe doesn’t even think to try and muffle his scream of pain. Once the metal is removed, Kaelen drops it onto a metal tray and Poe hisses quietly through clenched teeth, shoulders heaving as he tries to catch his breath.

“A little warning would have been nice,” he gasps out, watching as she brings a fresh cloth to his now bleeding wound.

“I said it might hurt,” Kaelen points out, but her words are laced with an apologetic tone. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how it’s done in the Resistance, but I do what I can.” She holds the cloth to his arm until the bleeding stops, then reaches across her table to pick up a needle and thread. Poe eyes the objects worriedly and she catches his glance, offering another apologetic one in return. “I don’t have anything to put you under,” she says, answering his unspoken question. He sighs heavily and nods, letting her push him up slowly into a sitting position that didn’t upset the stitches along his abdomen.

When the needle goes in, Poe muffles his screams.

It takes eight minutes for Kaelen to sew him shut.

The entire time she works, she’s silent, not even sparing a moment to look at him anywhere besides his wounded shoulder. When the needle goes in a bit too deep, or when Poe can’t keep the screams silent anymore, her hands remain steady on his skin. She doesn’t bat an eye at the blood or the tears or the dirt. Doesn’t so much as say a word until the final stitch is swen and she reaches for the gauze.

Kaelen works quickly and noiselessly, and Poe wonders not for the first time how long ago she had learned to do this. Her gaze drifts up from his shoulder long enough for their eyes to meet, and her expression softens. “I know what you’re probably thinking,” she speaks slowly, a sort of empty sadness slipping into her tone. “It’s not uncommon out here. Things happen, people get hurt. We learn to adapt.” Her fingers press flat on his skin as she sticks a bandage in place over the stitches. “There.”

“Thank you,” Poe offers her a small smile that Kaelen hesitates to return. She does, eventually, but it’s tinged with a sadness that he can’t quite decipher. He watches as she turns around to clean up the medical supplies, her movements stiff and mechanical as if she had gone through them a million times. In all honesty, Poe wouldn’t be surprised to find out she had.

Sometime between the start and the end of the stitching process, BB-8 had rolled into the room with them. Kaelen was a calming presence, but Poe couldn’t deny that having his droid there made him that much more comfortable. He listened to the soft beeps and whistles of the binary tongue as Kaelen turns back to face him. “Why are you here? On Akiva?”

Poe sighs slowly, wringing his hands. “The Resistance...they’ve got allies here. Allies are important. They’re rare. I need to get something to them.”

Kaelen hums softly, a quiet noise of acknowledgement as she fixed him with a concerned gaze. “And what are you going to do now?” she asks him quietly.

“Finish the mission,” he says simply, as if it was the only option there was. BB-8 beeps encouragingly beside him, and Poe casts his gaze downwards towards him, shaking his head. “You know we have to, buddy.”

“You can barely sit up without assistance,” Kaelen states, perching herself on the edge of the table. “Your droid is right.”

Poe’s fingers curl around the edge of bed he sits on. Logically, he knows both of them are right. Going into the city with his injuries as they are was bound to end in disaster, both for him and the people he had to get to if he couldn’t protect them. Kaelen watches him debate with himself as she stands up from the table. “At the very least, get some rest,” she says, picking up the cloth she had used to stem his bleeding. She shoots him another apologetic glance before adding, “I just stitched your shoulder up without any painkillers. I think you’re entitled to some sleep.”

Poe chuckles dryly as Kaelen leaves the room. BB-8 beeps concernedly up at him, head tilting back on his spherical body. “I know, buddy,” he says, focusing on pulling his legs back onto the bed without irritating the stitches across his abdomen. “It’ll all be okay.”

_I hope._

This time, Poe doesn’t fight it when sleep takes him over.


End file.
